Hitler and the Vatican Inside the Secret Archives That Reveal the New Story of the Nazis and the Church

Chapter 1: Unanswered Questions Why did the Catholic Church not raise its voice against the cruelties of racism, the brutality of totalitarianism, the repression of liberties in the Third Reich? Did the notorious silences about the Nazis on Rome's part undermine its claims to moral authority? These questions have not been raised neutrally. Spiced by speculation, polemic has focused on "Hitler's Pope": Pius XII (1939-58). It has not been known that, long before he was crowned, during the 1930s, a condemnation of the moral and doctrinal errors of National Socialism was prepared by the Holy See. That condemnation was couched in terms intelligible to Adolf Hitler, such as the following: The Church condemns as heretical the opinion that human nature is not essentially the same in all people, but that mankind which now inhabits the earth is composed of races so different from one another that the lowest of them is even further from the highest race than it is from the highest kind of animal that resembles man. Had this sentence been made public, it is certain that Hitler would have recognized the damned opinion because he had expressed it himself in his "victory speech" held before the congress of the National Socialist Party on November 3, 1933. The Fuhrer would no doubt have reacted with rage to criticism by the Church, for racism was a cardinal doctrine in the Nazi creed.The Vatican's plans were far-reaching. Aimed at views stated in Mein Kampf and in Hitler's other writings or speeches, they struck at such fundamental elements in the ideology of National Socialism as "blood" and its "purity": "The Church condemns the view that any mixture of blood with a foreign and inferior race, in particular a mixture of the Arian with the Semitic race, is, by reason of that mixture alone, a most heinous crime against nature and marks a grave fault in the conscience."Nor did the attack on Hitler stop there. His ideas and those of other Nazi leaders on subjects ranging from "eugenics" to sterilization, from education to leadership and individual rights, were damned by the Vatican in successive drafts: All people about whom there are grounds to fear that they may produce imperfect offspring may be prevented from contracting a marriage that could be fertile, even if they are otherwise capable of marriage, and they may be sterilized, even against their will. Children conceived by parents of this kind may be removed by the direct intervention of an abortion. Or: The first and chief right to educate belongs to that institution which has the first and chief right to provide for the race, i.e.: the state, neither to the Church nor the parents...As to the education of young people, they should not, in first place, be imbued with religious sentiments or with love and fear of God but with a feeling of affection for the race so that they regard nothing on this earth with more respect than the race and the state built on the basis of racial character. Or: Nothing but the absolute and unlimited leadership of one man is the form of government in the state that is in keeping with the lawful path which nature follows in selecting races and individuals.Any other form of government is more or less a contravention of nature. Or: Single individuals and associations of people have no rights, either by divine or natural law, which are prior to the state or independent of it and not only is the exercise of rights decided upon by the state but even their origin and simple existence. The program of National Socialism and its practice were being branded as incompatible with Christianity years before Pius XII mounted the throne of St. Peter in 1939. His predecessor Pius XI (1922-39) and other leading figures in the curial establishment believed that such statementsGodman, Peter is the author of 'Hitler and the Vatican Inside the Secret Archives That Reveal the New Story of the Nazis and the Church' with ISBN 9780743245975 and ISBN 0743245970.